The US military says the Taliban is getting stronger in Afghanistan.

Uruzgan was one of three southern provinces where U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins said the insurgents have bolstered their numbers.

"We know for a fact that in recent weeks they have grown in strength and influence in some parts of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan," he told a news conference in Kabul. "There is a hard-core group of Taliban fighters, certainly numbering in the hundreds."

He said the militants are recruiting poor villagers.

"They prey upon people who don't have a lot of hope. They recruit people to join their cause," he said. "These people may not believe much in the cause, but they need a job."

Of course, we couldn't be bothered with actually helping Afghanistan grow an economy (aside from opium) or actually establish law and order.

"Taliban Schmaliban! Saddam is thumbing is nose at us! Let's fix the facts and go get him!"

And so we spend millions of dollars a minute dealing with the civil war we unleashed in Iraq, while the real terrorists who planned 9/11 get stronger in Afghanistan.

In making this choice, Bush may have been "the decider," but it sure doesn't seem to have been all that smart now.

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